If you are a young entrepreneur looking for fame and fortune, the next best thing to winning a big investment on Dragons’ Den may be to enter BDC’s Young Entrepreneur Awards, which kick off Monday.

The Business Development Bank, which has sponsored the YEA awards for 24 years, has overhauled the program to add pizzazz. This year, in addition to the individual provincial and territorial winners, one regional winner will receive a grand prize for demonstrating its innovation leadership. The prize, in­tended to help further the winner’s innovation projects, will be $100,000 cash.

In keeping with today’s crowd-sourced, video-driven social-media culture, the public will vote online for the most innovative firm, based on video updates from each finalist company.

“The key to a successful entry is to have an executable project that will drive business growth,” say BDC contest organizers. But innovation doesn’t have to mean some expensive high-tech breakthrough. Successful business innovation can also be a simple but creative improvement to any existing product, service or process. “Innovative projects can be anything from an imaginative way to grab new markets to cutting costs with a smarter manufacturing method.”

This year, the winning company will likely be one that’s also adept at producing short, engaging videos. I think that’s a good move. Young people today record everything on their camera phones, and they learn editing by remixing music videos and movie trailers. Their creativity is exciting to see.

Last year, I was a judge for a Sprouter.com contest involving office equipment; the nine companies competing for a prize had to blog about how they learned to love and leverage a wireless printer. Told they would earn extra points for adding photos or videos to their blogs, several entrepreneurs chose to chronicle their adventures through highly creative videos, which incorporated zany stunts, “man on the street” interviews and even flash mobs.

Everyone’s getting in on the act. A recruiting executive recently told me she’s seen great results from producing video recruiting ads. With the success of YouTube and NetFlix, the Web is hitting its stride as a multi-media platform, which means any company that doesn’t develop video-production skills will be at a disadvantage in coming years.

All kinds of companies have a chance to win YEA awards. Last year’s winners included an open-source app developer in Vancouver, a steel fabricator in Red Deer, Alta., a Regina jewellery designer, a helicopter company in Whitehorse, a Moncton-based homebuilder, a nutrition company in Prince Edward Island, a circus school in Halifax, and a trend-tracking service in (where else?) Toronto.

And if you are wondering whether awards are worth the time it takes to apply, one of last year’s winners is still grateful for the publicity. Steve Couture is a co-founder of Frima Studio Inc., a leading Quebec City developer of games for the Web, consoles and smartphones. From a dirt-poor start, Frima (the French word for the frost that forms on the inside of windows; referring to the company’s first days, when heating was a luxury) now has hit games including Pocket God, Zombie Tycoon and Young Thor under its belt, and more than 300 employees.

Contests such as YEA “generate good return on investment,” Couture says, identifying several benefits:

Publicity gained from the announcement of winners, including mention in the initial press releases and media interviews through the year;

Contacts and knowledge gained meeting other winners from across Canada. “I don’t have enough chances to meet with other high-level entrepreneurs in Canada,” Couture says. “It’s always good.”

Increased ability to attract talent by positioning a company as one that’s going places — especially since Frima is actively recruiting outside Quebec; and

Long-term respect gained by promoting the awards you’ve won to prospects and other stakeholders.

Couture says he doesn’t expect awards to generate sales. But the impact can be even more valuable. For instance, Frima’s YEA win inspired many enthusiastic calls offering support from both Canadian and U.S. venture capitalists; while Couture says he doesn’t need their help just now, these contacts could pay off in future.

As a previous BDC client, he also appreciates the new respect the company has won within the bank, which apparently doesn’t always take seriously companies that make games called Littlest Pet Shop Online, or A Space Shooter for Two Bucks. Having acquired two companies last year (one that creates concept art for video games, and a 30-person developer of visual effects for movies), Couture is eager to be taken seriously. His goal is not just to dominate gaming, but to become a multi-media powerhouse.

“We’re very interested in TV and cinema,” he says. “We want to bring our own intellectual property to the screen — whichever screen it is.”

Couture sees awards like YEA as a useful stepping stone for any ambitious company. “It’s visibility, it’s contacts, and it’s a great way to boost your credibility with potential partners,” he says. “There is no downside.”

The BDC YEA nominations are open to entrepreneurs up to age 35 who own at least 20% of their companies. Applications and entry videos must be submitted by April 8. Provincial finalists will be announced May 2, and the $100,000 winner will be crowned May 28. For more information, visit bdcyoungentrepreneurs.ca

Rick Spence is a writer, consultant and speaker specializing in entrepreneurship. His column appears weekly in the Financial Post. He can be reached at rick@rickspence.ca

The trouble with tech entrepreneurs is they tend to be very smart people with a great grasp of technology, but aren’t necessarily adept at selling their next big thing.

Others may have the ability to sell, but lack the time to do it themselves. To make matters worse, in many cases they lack the funds to hire dedicated salespeople to bang on doors and get their product in the hands of end users, value-added resellers or other potential sales partners. We found ourselves in that latter category when we founded Filemobile in 2006.

But we still managed a few quick, high-profile sales that launched our firm and helped us grow. How?

As we mentioned in our last entry, between 2006 and 2008 we had an existing online fantasy sports business that at the time was generating revenue and a healthy profit. Of course, that business had clients, all of whom we knew were looking to deepen their involvement in social media marketing by leveraging user-generated content (UGC) to enhance online client engagement. Filemobile’s Media Factory platform did exactly that, which gave us an opportunity to pitch to a pool of hungry, potential customers.

While other, larger firms such as KickApps and Pluck — both of which have since been acquired — were offering similar products, we leaned on strong relationships and a few unique features to land those key sales. We also built some unique features into Media Factory that were born directly out of client conversations where we asked — and they outlined — their UGC management platform wish list. We then went back to our offices and built the tools they needed.

To undercut our larger competitors we offered discounts, but with a catch — clients were given a lower price for the right to use their logos in the client section of Filemobile.com and the promise of a reference if they liked the product and the support we provided. They agreed and proved to be satisfied customers. Those big names included CBC, MolsonCoors and Much Music, to name just a few. They also agreed to include a ‘Powered by Filemobile’ logo each time they utilized our platform to power a contest, customer community or citizen journalism feature.

Having big name brands as reference clients offered the much-needed validation to get us in the door at CTV and The Weather Network.

It also gave us leverage when cold-calling other targets. Entrepreneurs be warned: cold calling is a time-consuming, frustrating, painful — but ultimately necessary — task we forced ourselves to spend time on each day. Having those reference clients, as well as intelligence about their pain points and short-to-medium-term marketing objectives, helped us pique their interest by phone and land in-person pitch meetings.

Being a social media marketing company, we also leveraged the great equalizer to research prospective clients and build personal networks. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook became our go-to tools to build buzz about the interesting products Filemobile was building, while researching current and future industry trends. Arming ourselves with up-to-date insider knowledge has been a mainstay of our sales strategy ever since and helped us secure contracts with ever-larger clients, particularly U.S. media powerhouses such as Maxim Magazine and Fox News.

Lastly, we used that knowledge to position ourselves as thought leaders in newsletters and blogs that spoke to the needs of our current and future clients and demonstrated our grasp on the online revenue and engagement-driving issues that mattered to their businesses. Using that content to secure speaking opportunities at conferences and any other relevant forum helped put us in the room with potential sales leads.

Selling with no sales team was tough and required a great deal of ingenuity and time, but little in the way of capital expenditures. The lesson here is that it’s much easier to hire dedicated professionals to push your product, but in those early startup days when the budget simply doesn’t exist for such luxuries, there are ample opportunities to sell and achieve your dream of tech entrepreneurial success.

Just be prepared to put in a few thousand hours to get the job done.

Next time — the third installment of our series on how Filemobile survived to the five-year mark: how we overcame overwhelming competition.

Steve Hulford, Chief Creative Officer

Ron Watson, Chief Financial Officer

Marc Milgrom, President

Filemobile Inc.

This regular blog aims to provide relevant management insights and highlight industry developments and opportunities, to help technology entrepreneurs start, manage and grow their firms.

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/entrepreneur/fp-startups/perfecting-the-fine-art-of-selling-with-no-sales-team/feed/0stdfilemobileNational Post teams up with XMG Studio to launch first ever Great Canadian Appathonhttp://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/national-post-teams-up-with-xmg-studio-to-launch-first-ever-great-canadian-appathon
http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/national-post-teams-up-with-xmg-studio-to-launch-first-ever-great-canadian-appathon#commentsThu, 17 Feb 2011 19:02:15 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=28567

Attention all aspiring Canadian video game developers: do you have what it takes to create the next hit smartphone game?

Well, now’s your chance.

The National Post is teaming up with Toronto’s XMG Studio to create the first ever Great Canadian Appathon, a 48-hour coding extravaganza open to college and university students from across Canada.

Teams of aspiring game developers will pit their skills in a race against time to design and create a mobile video game from scratch in the hopes of securing the $25,000 grand prize, provided by Telus Corp.

“At National Post we embrace digital innovation and great design every day and we are thrilled to support these young entrepreneurs as they battle it out under intense pressure.,” said National Post Publisher, Douglas Kelly.

“Our journalists will be covering this event around the clock, on all of our platforms.”

In total, there is more than $45,000 in prize money up for grabs, as well as Telus smartphones and, of course, the chance to have your game published on a major platform.

“Honing in on what makes a game fun and addictive is the key to success in this competition,” said Ray Sharma, founder and CEO of XMG Studio.

“With game development cycles often spanning months or even years, the biggest challenge facing participants will be tight time constraints.”

The event kicks off on Friday, March 11 at 5 p.m. and continues through the weekend until 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 13. Students can enter as individuals or as part of a team of up to four people.

The National Post and XMG will be setting up coding stations at university and college campuses across Canada where contestants will be able to work around the clock throughout the event. Event sponsors will be on hand with tasty snacks and beverages and there may even be a few recruiters hanging around to talk job opportunities in the video game industry.

Winners will be considered for two job opportunities at XMG Studio’s Toronto offices — one game programming position and one game artist position. XMG will also work alongside the winning teams to polish their games and get them published on the appropriate App Store.

KPMG will be sponsoring a special “Grand Finale” event in Toronto later on in March where all the winning teams will be honoured.

So far, six Canadian schools have signed up to participate: Carleton University in Ottawa, Nova Scotia Community College, the University of British Columbia, University of Waterloo, University of Ontario Institute of Technology and triOS college.

If you’re a student and you want to participate, but your school isn’t on the list, get in touch with us and we’ll try and get your school on board.

We’ll have more news about the competition in the weeks ahead in addition to live coverage of the events at each location right here on FP Tech Desk.

An online contest using social networking sites Facebook and Twitter — and offering prizes including an iPad — is being run by the Canadian Securities Administrators to help raise financial literacy among young people.

The Financial Fitness Challenge, runs from February 15 to April 15 and touches on concepts such as balancing needs versus wants, budgeting, saving and investing.

It is open to participants between the ages of 15 and 21.

“With close to 60,000 youth actively participating in the challenge over the past four years, the CSA has presented financial literacy education in a format that resonates with youth,” said Bill Rice, chair of the CSA and chief executive of the Alberta Securities Commission.